Tag: restoration

You walk out to go to work and the front tire is flat. Or you’re welcoming the new pastor to your deliciously prepared Thanksgiving dinner only to remember (while on the doorstep) that he’s vegetarian.

Okay, those are actually easy ones. How about your son calls from college and his girlfriend is now pregnant with your grandchild? (And the girl is contemplating get rid of both of them?)

Introducing the Panic Button, and we all have one. Or for some of us, several. Big ones clipped onto our keychains that we carry around every day, with glow-in-the-dark coatings and red LED-lit letters that invitingly read PUSH ME NOW. Continue reading “In which Dawn learns to pray…(cont.)”

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The iconic Underdog character was birthed from the mind of W. Watts Biggers. I think he intuitively knew our American mindset in this area!

Why am I always rooting for the underdog? I love David and Goliath stories, and how the tables are turned on the bullies, whether that bully comes in the form of a person or an attitude. Like this one:Continue reading “Table-turning”

I’ve mentioned before that Bob and I take on a somewhat Rockwellian look as he reads to me while I crochet in my great-grandmother’s rocking chair. At this writing, we’re still on Ayn Rand’s famous American novel, Atlas Shrugged, but are somewhat bogged down in the author’s voluminous rant via the character John Galt. I finally opted out when my more intellectual half offered to read the rest of that chapter on his own and pick me back up when the plot resumes…

Bob has also read the likes of Plato, Aristotle, and Euclid. Why, you may ask? Not sure. I’ve enjoyed some Virgil and Augustine, but I also tend toward Calvin and Hobbes. (In all honesty, Bob is well rounded Continue reading “Dante in a graphic novel??”

The Israelite judge, Jephthah, is generally known for the weird story about his daughter, poor kid.

But I think we generally miss the importance of this guy’s backstory and how God may have used it to his (and His) advantage.

Back in those days, having sons was pretty well tantamount to status (as opposed to having daughters; now where they thought the baby boys came from, gets me…) And although even our secular Western culture has fairly well done away with that mindset, they (and us) still deal with the “world’s oldest profession”.

So while Jephthah’s dad, Gilead, had several socially legitimate sons, little Jephthah was not one of them, and was treated accordingly.

“…and when these half brothers grew up, they chased Jephthah off the land. ‘You will not get any of our father’s inheritance,” they said, ‘for you are the son of a prostitute.’ So Jephthah fled from his brothers and lived in the land of Tob. Soon he had a band of worthless rebels following him.”

Because, back then, with those kinds of credentials, that’s about all the following you’re going to get. I can only imagine what hardship he must have suffered going from the house of his father (probably bullied while he was growing up anyway, but at least provided for) to ousted into the “real world”, possibly as a teenager. Homeless. Despised. Without family or connections. Or money.

As usual, the plot thickens—

“At about this time, the Ammonites began their war against Israel. When the Ammonites attacked, the elders of Gilead sent for Jephthah in the land of Tob. The elders said, ‘Come and be our commander! Help us fight the Ammonites!’ But Jephthah said to them, ‘Aren’t you the ones who hated me and drove me from my father’s house? Why do you come to me now when you’re in trouble?’”

Run off the farm, rather than living in the lap of luxury, Jephthah has been hardened by life’s boot camp, and is now evidently the one most suited for rescuing those same brothers with soft, un-callused hands.

And rescue he does, like the rushing in of the cavalry.

The point is this. People do us injustices. We have to suffer the consequences of others’ stupidity, prejudices, unkindness, or just low-down thoughtlessness. I’m bullied, kicked out of the club, whether physically or emotionally. Bereft. Alone. (At least it feels that way.)

But God has other plans, and this is just part of the Divine Boot Camp. Plans for rescue, not vengeance, for redemption, and restoration, and it may be for the very ones who turned me out.

Jephthah’s hands and muscles may have become just as soft as his brothers had he stay in his dad’s house all that time. Instead, he became the hero.

Which is God’s training for all of us, to be heroes in one way or another.

Boy, how I wish I had purchased stock in duct tape! Not only do they now have this universally revered product in a seemingly infinite array of colors and patterns, but have you seen the bandaids with the same kind of fiber embedded in them? They’re the BEST! (And, as a school nurse, I am, after all, a connoisseur of fine bandaids.) Do they even use it for ducts anymore? I wonder if they took a roll of it into space during the ill-fated Apollo 13 mission; I seem to remember Tom Hanks and his crew using it…

I’m writing this on the way out to California to visit our eldest and her family. One thing about typing on a computer in a jet flying through turbulent weather is that I will at least be able to read this later. Not quite so easy were I writing this longhand. (Although, that challenge sometimes applies to my handwriting with my feet on terre firma also…)

We’re kinda intermittently bouncing around up here, which reminds me of the time I flew to the Big Apple by myself to see our youngest daughter’s first art show. At that time, closing in on the airport brought us directly into the path of a thunder and lightning storm, reminiscent of the Midwest I had just left. It was something out of the beginning of a Steven Spielberg movie; foreboding Continue reading “Seatbelt sign on”

I love birds. Not like Audubons love birds, but Bob and I do own a cheap pair of field glasses and a nice Peterson’s Guide. Here in southern MO, we live in a fly-over zone, and also near a conservation area, so we’re just geeky enough to enjoy a “date” seeing how many avians we can identify. Our day is made if we are visited by a bald eagle or a close up view of a gaggle of something.

Here in the Midwest, we live with tornadoes. It’s just a way of life; you kind of get used to it, but it’s best not to get TOO used to it, if you get my drift.

One thing we don’t get much of is another kind of “drift”, an earthquake. Evidently, I’ve been in one without knowing it. My husband said the test tubes in his lab rattled, but I sure wasn’t privy to anything. Our family out in California, however, understands this geological phenomenon somewhat more up close and personal. There’s just something about being woken up with your bed bouncing around that Continue reading “There’s a whole lotta shakin’ going on!”

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May I have the honor of introducing you to the Creator of vibrant rainbows, redwood forests, and the duckbill platypus? He is not only amazingly creative, terrifyingly awesome, but also incredibly humorous. (And He likes to see you smile....honest.)

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“[To the Church in Laodicea] “To the angel of the church in Laodicea write: These are the words of the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the ruler of God’s creation. Here I am! I stand at the door and knock. If anyone hears my voice and opens the door, I will come in and eat with that person, and they with me.”